


The Widow's Walk

by ivorygates



Series: Tiger'verse [2]
Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Dark, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-14
Updated: 2015-02-14
Packaged: 2018-03-12 07:37:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3348986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivorygates/pseuds/ivorygates
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's a week since he sent them to 7R14B.  He remembers the days when he could pretend not to remember the Gate algorithms, could play the clown.  When he wasn't the one on a first name basis with dead civilizations.</p>
<p>He doesn't like to think about his (old) team.  It makes him remember the days when Teal'c thought the <em>Tau'ri</em> were different.  When Carter stayed up all night unscrewing the inscrutable and babbling on about quarks and muons like they were hockey teams.  When Dani…</p>
<p>No.  He won't think about them.</p>
<p>=====</p>
<p>What happened back at their SGC during "Tiger By The Tail"</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Widow's Walk

There's a chapel up on 6. Sleek, nondenominational, soulless as an airport waiting room. Nobody uses it much any more. There are bronze plaques lining the walls. The plaques have a lot of names on them. Nothing to say how their owners died, or where, or when.

There's a chapel down on 28. Used to be an emergency storeroom. The walls are concrete, and nobody's bothered to pretty them up, aside from hanging up a bulletin board. It holds the MIA/KIA lists, week by week. The room's been cleared out. It's empty except for a long table shoved against one wall and some folding chairs stacked in corners. It's a long table, and its surface is cluttered. Mostly with candles. The walls are covered with painted stars.

When somebody goes MIA, someone chalks a star up on the wall. If the person comes back, it's washed off. If there's confirmation (they get it far too often: the Lucians like to brag), it's painted into place.

He chalked the last four up there himself.

It's a week since he sent them to 7R14B. He remembers the days when he could pretend not to remember the Gate algorithms, could play the clown. When he wasn't the one on a first name basis with dead civilizations.

He doesn't like to think about his (old) team. It makes him remember the days when Teal'c thought the _Tau'ri_ were different. When Carter stayed up all night unscrewing the inscrutable and babbling on about quarks and muons like they were hockey teams. When Dani…

No. He won't think about them.

No mission is easy. Some are easier than others. 7R14B was supposed to be one of those, a simple smash-and-grab. Three hours past their ETA he sent a UAV through. It got about four minutes of video before someone shot it out of the sky.

The DHD was intact. SIGINT gives an 85% probability that the marks on the ground around the Gate come from the detonation of rings of mines. SG-1's calling card. It doesn't mean they got as far as the Gate. Someone else could have set them off. All they'd need would be the detonator.

Once upon a time (all good fairy tales start that way) the SGC would have sent rescue, backup, searchers. He still does it when he can, but they're a little short on everything in this brave new world the snakes made, and what they're shortest on is people. Support staff, combat staff, people he can throw through the Gate with a fifty-fifty chance of getting them back alive.

Mitchell's one. He'd wanted Mitchell for the SGC from the first time he showed up on O'Neill's radar. 302 Program, bright and shining, and he brought Mitchell up to George because that was his job, and George said they needed him where he was. A reprieve for Mitchell, and it lasted a big big twenty-eight months before the Spring Surprise. And then they (he, the SGC, _Earth_ ) needed Mitchell desperately, needed every set of boots on the ground they could get. Someone who'd already been tarred with the Program's brush was easy to recruit, and SG-1 needed someone who could lead them into Hell and out the other side. That's Mitchell. Mitchell has something to live for. O'Neill wishes he didn't (but puppies and kittens and rainbows won't get you home from a fucked op, and hate will), and he knows Mitchell's career can only end one way, but Christ. Not yet. They still need him. Need them. SG-1. Cold comfort to know that they're either dead or on the run; if the Lucians had any of them it couldn't resist bragging. And it knows how to get a message through. The Lucians know right where Earth is.

The press never mentions Earth's _second_ battle against invading space aliens, because nobody knows about it (O'Neill makes his reports to President Kinsey; what Kinsey shares with the IOC is his business). Eight months after they took out the king snake and his fleet the galaxy was falling apart (already falling apart) and there were already plenty of looters picking through the ruins of the _Goa'uld_ Empire. (It's one of Life's blacker jokes that a lot of the problems they have now have more to do with his boys and girls being good at their jobs than Earth being backward and defenseless.) But eight months after they took out the king snake and knocked all the little snakes into a cocked hat the Lucian Alliance came calling, and all Earth had was their new 303 and the six (count 'em) 302s they'd managed to get built. Barely enough to knock the Lucians back. But they did it. And in the wake of that "victory", the order came down from On High: use any means necessary to keep the Lucians from coming back.

O'Neill understands necessity. And so (these days) does Kinsey. But it was O'Neill who gave the orders, and on his orders his command took the addresses they'd identified as _probable_ Lucian strongholds (the difference between "probable" and "confirmed" is enough to keep him awake at night) and sent everything through the Gate they could throw: anthrax, cholera, black plague, typhus -- anything that could be weaponized -- and followed it up with symbiote toxin. If they hadn't, maybe the universe would be a nicer place. But Earth probably wouldn't be here to appreciate it. So they've become terrorists in the name of peace, and butchers in the name of freedom. Everything old is new again.

The Constitution that he swore to protect (along with the Republic) is in tatters; the shining city on the hill is an armed camp. But his people are holding the line they drew in the nonexistent sand. So far. And he's praying that his best terrorists are somehow coming home because he needs to send them out to kill again.

#

Everyone in the Mountain knows SG-1 is MIA. It doesn't do a lot for morale. (It'd be worse if he tried to cover it up; he knows damned well.) He's had to turn down a dozen offers (from every commander on the ready list) to go to 7R14B on R&R (Recon and Rescue), but he won't throw the rest of his people at something that could take out the SGC's flagship team. Sue him. If they're alive (somewhere, anywhere) he'll hear about it. The order of the day is watch and warn. If he gets hard intel, maybe they can risk a rescue.

Maybe.

He's always sucked at waiting.

Day seven. Can't let his command know he's being eaten alive, and God knows what Beckett would prescribe for his nerves if he went up to the Infirmary. He never thought he'd be grateful for paperwork, but then, the future isn't what it used to be. So he writes up a timely memo to MilZoneSec about "Cowboy" Delgado -- he can never remember Major Delgado's given name, not that he has any reason to -- because Delgado shot up the house next door and tossed a grenade through the window when she came home to find that somebody'd set her cat on fire and left the body in her mailbox. Zone Security know she's one of his people and there's a hands-off policy, but please, General sir, can't you make her behave?

So he tells MilZoneSec he's handling it in-house. Then he writes another memo telling Delgado to move. He'd tell her team leader to keep an eye on her, but there's one small problem with that: Delgado _is_ the team leader. And SG-7 is alive and reasonably successful. And if she isn't the kind of officer they'd have let get within a hundred miles of the SGC three, five, ten years ago, well ... things have changed.

He spins the paperwork out to noon, but Sgt. Calloway is ruthlessly efficient (he misses Walter, he misses Simmons) and that means now he's got a clear desk. And time to brood.

He won't leave the Mountain just yet, but he'll have to go home in a day or two. (Home's inside Cordon 1. It's the same place it always was, only the houses around it were bulldozed when the cordons were set up. Sight-lines and clear fields of fire. The future isn't what it used to be.) There's still no word from their Offworld listening posts, not even a rumor, and he caves just a little. (He's waited by the phone this long for other teams to come home. He can't wait longer for SG-1.) He takes his personal weapon out of the top drawer of his desk and holsters it before he leaves his office. (New habits for a new era.)

He allows himself a precise fifteen minutes of wandering the halls before giving up (breaks up a fight on 27, but it's fists -- not knives -- and it's internal to SG-8, so he just tells them to take it to the gym). It's time to take his TS Chit to the Chaplain. At least he doesn't have to lay out chapter and verse: Father Maurice Nieman left Seminary for the Marine Corps, did his twenty, and turned around and went back. Father Mike has the distinction of being one of the few people who asked to come here (another is Master Sergeant Irene Calloway, and he doesn't know her story and he isn't going to ask).

He only remembers Father Mike's predecessor in the vaguest way. Dr. Crieche split her time between Archeo-Linguistics and saving souls: she held court in her office next to the chapel up on 6, and maybe she did some good. He wouldn't remember her at all, except her Toyota was t-boned by some cowboy at a four-way-stop and she died the Friday before the snakes came. (SG-1 spent that afternoon on P3X-439 with 3 and 5 because of the Ancient database there; he was fighting with Dani about who was going to get their head sucked when they ran out of time, so they blew it up and settled the question.) He remembers George calling him at quarter to midnight, and when he heard the news, he thought _at least it isn't anything important,_ and he regretted the thought but he couldn't call it back. He spent the weekend putting out fires and thinking Monday was going to be a bitch because of that jackass Hayes, and Monday morning Hubble spotted the Goa'uld fleet, and Earth was being hammered on Tuesday and Wednesday, and on Thursday they kicked the big snake's ass (George and _Prometheus_ ; he can't say the butcher's bill was too high, and there are a lot of times he's just as glad George never saw what happened to his old command), and on Friday they made O'Neill a General.

And everybody who remembers Helen Crieche at all these days just thinks she had great timing.

O'Neill spends more time with Father Mike than he'd like to. Made the Air Force put "none" on the new set of tags they issued him back when, but he thinks Mike could smell the stench of Catholicism like the stink of _naquadaah_ on a freed host. Beeswax and incense, the certainty of Heaven and the mysteries of faith. All behind him now except for the reflexive urge to plea-bargain with fate.

Mike has a cubbyhole office next to the "new" chapel. It used to be his. The door's open. He walks in. Mike gets up to close the door behind him, walks back to his desk, sits down, and opens the bottom drawer. Bottle, two glasses.

"I didn't come here for a drink," O'Neill says sharply.

"Drink or make confession, it's all the same to me," Mike says, pouring. He runs his shop as half confessional, half open bar. Considering the other things that are SOP on base these days, O'Neill's willing to turn a blind eye to a little whiskey. "I think I've got more chance of getting you drunk than getting you back into the arms of Mother Church."

"I've killed too many gods for that."

"False gods," Mike answers. "I'm not going to hold it against you." He picks up one glass and nods to the other.

O'Neill walks over to the desk and picks up the second glass. "This isn't going to solve anything." He drinks anyway. The whiskey goes down cool and smooth and burning.

"No, but it keeps the Protestants coming back. And it makes up for the lack of altar boys."

"I'll add some to my next requisition," O'Neill says. "Blond or brunet?" It's too leaden for banter, but it's still soothing.

Mike shakes his head. "It's no fun if I don't have to get them drunk first and explain that sodomy is God's Will." He finishes off his drink -- he always has a heavy hand with guests, a light one with his own -- and pours himself another.

"Rough day at the office, dear?" O'Neill asks.

"Isn't that my line, Jack? I'd tell you things you already know, but I don't think you're ready to hear them."

"Everybody has to die sometime?" O'Neill tosses back the second half of his drink and stares down into the empty glass.

"That you're just as worried they'll come back as that they won't."

He doesn't bother to deny it. (The sonovabitch is right.) _Da, Domine, vitutem manibus meis, but there aren't any angels here, are there?  Impone, Domine, capiti meo galeam salutis, only it's a little hard to tell the players without a scorecard these days. My CMO's a butcher, my boys and girls would be war criminals under any civilized Rules of Engagement. Because of my orders. Because I followed them. Because I would've disobeyed orders to do what I did. Dealba me, Domine, and if I really believed You could do it I wouldn't get any sleep at all. So forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. It's been twenty years since my last confession; it's been forty years since I confessed and meant it. I'd confess to Almighty God, to the Blessed Virgin Mary, to blessed Michael the Archangel, to blessed John the Baptist, to the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, and to all the saints, that I have sinned often and exceedingly, if I thought there was anyone up there to hear. I can't remember all my sins anymore, except the ones I can't forget. For covering up what Nirrti did to Dani on P3X-376 I am heartily sorry. For calling in the Tok'ra on Pangar, I am heartily sorry. For promising Teal'c I could free the slaves and being wrong, I am heartily sorry. For what I turned Carter into, I am heartily sorry. For letting that file through to Mitchell's inbox after the firewall flagged it, I am heartily sorry. I have sinned often and exceedingly, in thought, word, and deed, through my fault, my fault, my most grievous fault. But I'm not sorry enough to make this a true confession, because I'd do it all again. I _will _do it all again. Just let them come back alive._

If he were a good man he wouldn't have this job.

Couldn't do this job.

"No wonder they kicked you out of the priesthood." _I don't have the luxury of not wanting them back. Earth needs them._

"Out of the Marines," Mike corrects. "The Corps has standards. The Church'll take anybody."

"Point to you." The conversation (such as it is) is more of a counter-irritant than consolation. Just as well. He didn't come here for absolution. Doesn't believe in it, wouldn't want it if it existed.

Doesn't deserve it.

"So," Mike says, setting down his own empty glass. (He puts the bottle back in the drawer; O'Neill never has more than one.) "I could tell you to go home, let you take a swing at me, or I could take that bottle back out and get you drunk."

"My altar boy days are far behind me," O'Neill answers automatically. Mike's doing his job, though (they're all very good at their jobs, the men and women under his command). Nobody can run flat-out indefinitely. It's been seven days. Sooner or later--

\--he's out of Mike's office and running for the Control Room before the warning klaxon sounds. It's because of the hiss of the open channel; nobody uses the PA to announce anything good. _Offworld Activation_ (damned few of them are scheduled any more) and he's running down the list of teams offworld (six) and where they are and not coming up with any answers he likes.

De la Torres gives him an "Oh thank God" look as he gets there (Mike hasn't followed him; probably putting in a last-minute fix with his invisible nonexistent boss). "SG-1's IDC," she says.

He hasn't prayed in years and it's been a long time since he's known what he ought to hope for. So the fact that his team's come back (might have come back) is just that: a fact. Maybe a disaster. Too soon to know.

De la Torres hits the Condition Red button; O'Neill picks up a headset and flips a switch. She's scooting her chair sideways to get on internal and -- he knows -- make sure _both_ Armed Response Teams are called to the Gate Room.

"--pen the fucking goddamned door or I--" he hears over the channel. Mitchell.

"O'Neill," he says. There's crosstalk in the background. Carter and Dani are arguing, and he'd like to feel relief that they're alive, but he's thinking of all the things that can happen to a team MIA for week. Once upon a time they didn't need to presume every team that got back late was compromised, had been turned into a weapon to take Earth down. Once upon a time.

"This site is not secure." Mitchell says. He hears anger and tension in Mitchell's voice (only to be expected, even when a mission goes well). "Requesting clearance to come home or to divert."

"What took you guys so long?" he says. Stalling for time; the ARTs aren't in position yet. He sees the windsock on the Gate Room wall fill and flutter. The outside corridor's at positive pressure now. If they come through carrying gas grenades, whatever's in them won't get past the Gate Room.

"Sir, we ... kind of took an unscheduled detour. I say again, requesting clearance to--" Mitchell breaks off. There's the sound of a scuffle.

"Open the fucking door, Jack!" Dani's voice, bright and clear and angry.

Both ARTs are in position now. And he heard Dani's voice, so at least he can be pretty sure SG-1 isn't infected with some new plague. He puts his hand on the palm-lock and watches as the iris retracts. "Door's open. Come on home," he says.

A moment later the four of them walk through the Gate. Dani isn't wearing her glasses. Mitchell looks like somebody shot his dog. They knew what reception they'd get coming back late; he knows at some bone-deep level it doesn't matter. He watches as Mitchell wrestles with Dani over possession of her MG4. He remembers when he had to fight with her every mission about whether or not she'd carry a handgun.

"SG-1, drop your weapons," Sergeant Gonzalez says. _Or we will open fire._ She doesn't need to spell it out: in the closeup view from the monitor O'Neill can see the tiny red dots covering his team's bodies (they're all his teams these days, but SG-1 will always be _his)_ : the sighting lasers of a dozen weapons. It's still a struggle for Mitchell -- for all of them -- to down weapons on the ramp.

"Oh come on!" Dani snaps. "Jack! We busted our fucking butts to get back here, and--"

"Quiet," Mitchell says. Her answer is a wordless snarl.

Teal'c says something to her in _Goa'uld_. She answers in the same language. Mitchell and Carter walk the rest of the way down the ramp, hands clasped behind their necks. Teal'c's assumed the position too, but he and Dani are still arguing. If that's what they're doing.

De la Torres looks up to catch his attention. " _Naquadaah_ at acceptable levels, sir."

It'd be a lot easier on everybody's nerves if Carter and T didn't have _naquadaah_ in their blood. It'd mean any trace of _naquadaah_ picked up by the Gate Room sensors would be enough reason to take them down. He gets to his feet, grabs the flak-vest hanging on the wall.

"Sir!" de la Torres says, sounding alarmed.

"Showing the flag," he says briefly.

It takes longer than usual for the blast-door to open. It makes a sucking sound, and the wind from the corridor blows soft and cold over the back of his neck. When he gets to the Gate Room floor, SG-1 is already stripping off its tac-vests. The second and third ranks of ART make a hole for him.

"You guys want to tell me why you took the long way home?" he asks.

"Sightseeing," Dani snaps. Mitchell shakes his head wordlessly. Exasperation. Exhaustion.

"We've spent the last week stuck in an alternate universe," Carter says, sounding cranky. "Another SG-1 opened an interdimensional portal."

"Can we have the rest of this fucking conversation in the fucking Infirmary if you don't fucking mind General _sir_ ," Dani says. She starts toward him. The ART braces.

"You going to be a good girl?" he asks.

"I went to the animal fair," she answers.

From the way the rest of SG-1 reacts, it’s a responsive answer.

#

They're edgy and exhausted, and he doesn't think Carter's lying about where she thinks they were, but she _(all of them)_ know all the ways memories can be faked. They leave the Gate Room still under protocol: two SFs (armed and armored) on each of them, and into the elevator one by one. There's a protocol for that, too (theirs alone): Teal'c goes first, then Dani.

"The mission was a goatfuck and that was just the start," Mitchell says once the elevator closes on Dani. "We ran for home two hours into the mission clock. Only…"

"It wasn't home," Carter finishes. She looks angry. The elevator doors open again. She walks in.

"Got anything you want to share with the rest of the class?" O'Neill asks Mitchell. His instincts tell him there's something more wrong here than just a vacation in another universe.

"Almost didn't make it back," Mitchell says in an undertone. He looks like he wants to hit something.

"But you did." They've learned to define 'success' as getting back alive.

#

By the time he and Mitchell and the SFs reach the infirmary, T and Dani are both in their underwear and Carter's stripping off. Beckett's hovering and making clucking noises, but Dani's standing in the middle of the room and won't let him anywhere near her.

"Come on, lassie, you know you want your nice cooldown," Beckett says. "Just a wee drop of your blood first."

"If she doesn't, I do," Carter snaps. "Anything for peace in our time. For god's sake, Dani, let the nice man stick you with a needle." Carter kicks off her boots and her BDU pants and holds out her arm to the orderly. Every muscle is tense.

The orderly caps off the draw and drops the tube into his pocket. The 'welcome home' needle is into Carter's vein no more than a heartbeat later. (There are two kinds of orderlies in the SGC Infirmary: the quick and the ones looking for another line of work.) Carter takes a deep breath as the cocktail hits, and settles back on the edge of the bed.

"Had Jackson under sedation over there," Mitchell says helpfully. "Don't think she's right yet."

" _Fuck_ you, Mitchell," Dani hisses.

"Yeah. Promises, promises," Mitchell answers, sitting down on the bed beside Carter and looking down at his boots as if bending over to unlace them is too much trouble. Carter leans against him.

_"Leave me the fuck alone!"_

Mitchell starts to his feet when Dani shouts, but Teal'c's already grabbed her, and Beckett's obviously decided to dispense with post-mission protocol, because the needle he gets into her arm isn't empty.

"I don't want--" she says, but her voice is already starting to slur, and Beckett gets his blood.

Once upon a time, sedating teams that come back through the Gate wasn't standard procedure either.

#

All the four of them want is to get the hell off the Mountain, but he needs to know what happened. He gets half the story while they're being checked over and certified clean of plagues, bombs, and alien infestations. He'd rather listen to Carter than watch Beckett hover over Dani. He always feels Beckett isn't that far from strapping her down and taking her apart to see what makes her tick.

The short version goes: that they and seventeen alternate versions of SG-1 got dragged to an alternate SGC by accident. The nineteenth set of guests -- Mitchell calls them the Black Team -- went there on purpose because they wanted something, but Mitchell doesn't know what. The Black Team had a way to get home again, and once the alternate SGC found out what it was (found out it was being taken for a ride), it used it to send all of them back where they came from. The mind-numbing stupidity of the story makes him inclined to believe it. He still wants to know why being held prisoner in Wonderland's put that look on Mitchell's face.

It takes him almost an hour to put the whole story together.

#

Coffee and donuts around the conference room table. Dani's got her glasses back on; he lowers the lights anyway once Mitchell says she's spent four days without them.

Mitchell starts with the details of the mission to P7R-14B. It went wrong just about every way it could short of them being killed. They ran for the Gate -- with Tarik's Jaffa hot on their heels -- and dialed home. It took the SGC ninety seconds to send the 'All Clear' and the SGC they walked into wasn't theirs. In this Other SGC, he's dead and someone named Landry's in the Big Chair.

It takes O'Neill several minutes to place the name 'Hank Landry'. A guy he used to know back in the day. Pilot. Too cautious. Cared too much about appearances. Flew missions in 'Nam and married a local girl. After that, his cowboy days were over: O'Neill remembers Landry, three sheets to the wind in some O Club or other, lecturing a bunch of junior officers on the best way to make General before fifty. Nothing wrong with ambition, but O'Neill doesn't remember Landry as being the kind of guy who'd step up and pay the Ferryman's Fee.

"Couldn't see what else to do," Mitchell's saying. "Sticking around and playing nice was our best chance. Then we found out that the-- that the General didn't care too much whether we got home or not. Sir."

"You did the right thing," he says, but Mitchell's eyes are haunted. Let his team be captured, almost lost them, and he hasn't been around the track enough times yet to know sometimes there's nothing you can do. Even though they knew early on -- Carter says -- there was something rotten about the Black Team, that still didn't give them enough information to get home on.

Carter gives him the Little Golden Book version of the physics; Dani says she found proof that the Black Team was running dark. She's quieter than Beckett's cocktail can account for, and O'Neill knows she's burned through most of it already anyway.

"'Proof'," he prompts, because Dani's perfectly capable of denying the entire existence of a mission if she doesn't want to talk about it, and this might be his best shot at getting chapter and verse.

"Bill said we'd all be okay because we were--" she glances at Carter.

"Because our realities were so similar to theirs that Entropic Cascade Failure wasn't a factor," Carter says. "I know _I'd_ want Bill Lee checking _my_ math."

"Because they weren't," Dani finishes. She waves a hand irritably. Too much information to convey, and she's angry, or bored, or a combination. "Mitchell was a girl."

"You were a _guy,_ " Mitchell says back. But he tensed up before she got to the end of that sentence, so O'Neill wants to know what else Mitchell was, somewhere else. He glances toward Teal'c, and sees he isn't going to get anything there. T doesn't give his loyalty easily -- or frequently -- but for what it's worth, Mitchell has it now. And the fact their stories don't match doesn't mean much of anything (thank God he's been where Mitchell is, and knows the fact they sound like they went on four different missions doesn't mean he, any of them, are lying). Okay, scratch that: Dani's lying like a rug, and he'd kind of like to know about what, since she's happily telling him about the _mutiny_ she helped start in alt-SGC and the attempted murder of several reasonably-innocent airmen. But that can wait.

Carter's sung a song of fascinating breakthroughs in physics with a side order of 'people are idiots' (she picked that up from Dani, he thinks; Carter used to be more charitable) and lightly garnished with high explosive. If he were going by what Dani's said, she spent her time there hiding in closets, and Teal'c seems to have been there with her, because he's got his particularly cross 'Earthlings are jerks' expression on and isn't saying much aside from corroborating what Dani and Carter say.

But Mitchell... Well, Mitchell's mission apparently involved surrendering to enemy forces, collaborating with them in order to disarm his team, being taken prisoner without making any attempt at all to escape, and getting home with his team alive through nothing more than dumb luck. O'Neill's sure that's one interpretation of events. He doesn't hold it against Mitchell. He's been where Mitchell is. Sometimes it just plays that way.

"Samantha was _married,"_ Dani sing-songs. "And that _still_ wasn't enough to let those asswipes buy a clue."

"Gonna have to wash your mouth out with a couple Marines, you go on like that, sweet thing," Mitchell drawls, and Dani throws her pen at him. It's a great act, and O'Neill's the one who taught it to two of the people sitting here. He wonders now if the four of them had ever actually fooled George, back in the day, or if he just steered by instinct about what he needed to know and what he really didn't. Right now O'Neill's instinct is to let them go home and finish decompressing. There might be more information in their eventual reports, but he's not sure (now) it's important. The important thing is that they're back, and that's four stars on the chapel wall that won't be painted on. This time.

He dismisses them and goes back to his office to make up his mind if there's anything left in his inbox urgent enough to keep him from playing hooky for the rest of the day (he's pretty sure that Galloway would tell him). Opens the top drawer and puts his weapon away again. Most of the time it doesn't conjure up George's disapproving ghost _(since when does the CIC of Stargate Command need to go armed in his own command?)_ Today it does. Nineteen other realities got off more lightly than this one (or eighteen, if he leaves out the Black Team's). In all those other Roads Not Taken, the SGC's Rules of Engagement don't include torture, mass murder, attempted genocide. Where -- in all the months and years between their first trip to Abydos and today -- did theirs make the mistakes that made their reality one that does? Was it something he did? Or that he didn't do? It's a question he's asked himself every day since the Spring Surprise, and every day he's told himself that they _(that he)_ did the only thing they could have done, right down the line. And now he has proof (of a sort) that it isn't true.

He thinks of Teal'c saying their reality is the only one of consequence. He wishes he could believe it.

He looks up at the place the Plexiglas wall used to be. They filled it in with steel-reinforced concrete a while back; now the place from which you used to be able to look down on the Gate is a bank of monitors showing the Gate Room and all the approaches to his office. It's not the same, but habit is hard to break.

On the monitors, he sees Dani walking back up the corridor alone. He knows the fact she's come back to footnote her team's debrief is a heads-up there was something more substantial than stupidity and _doppelgangers_ to SG-1's detour. No matter what the Gate's done to her, she still does her job. He knows she's damaged -- they all are; he isn't stupid enough to believe anyone can do the things they do in the world the snakes made and be whole -- but if anyone's safe from her, he is. Nevertheless, when Dani walks in he's braced for anything, including attack. Calloway monitors his office. It might be enough to weight the odds in his favor if there's trouble. Most of his teams know they're better off with him in the Big Chair than they would be with someone else. When they remember. (He doesn't think Mitchell's Last Trump has blown yet. Mitchell would come for him personally. He's got a hole card ready to play when the day comes. Annabelle Mitchell _neé_ Campbell and both of her kids have been living in the Springs in Cordon 6 for the past two years. Of course Mitchell doesn't know. But O'Neill's counting on a preemptive reunion at the proper moment to slow him down.)

"Should have sent one of the other ones back," she says, pulling off her glasses and leaning across his desk. Her pupils are pinpricks because of the amount of light in his office, and her eyes are very blue. "You'd've liked her better."

"No," he answers. Her, just her, and he knows what Mitchell's feeling right now, because one time (the most important time) O'Neill should have protected his team, he didn't.

"Pretty… sweet… soft…" she says, straightening up and walking around his desk. "Nineteen Roads Not Taken. None of them like this."

"So… you're saying we got the best deal?" he asks evenly. He knows that even when Dani wants to confess, she needs to be coaxed into it. (And confession implies guilt and shame; he doesn't think she feels either any longer.)

She smiles at him, and it looks wistful, as if she's still the woman who walked into Cheyenne Mountain eleven years ago believing in the essential goodness of everyone everywhere. He wonders if she realizes that she isn't. He wonders if she cares. _Tell me what you want for Christmas, little girl. Sanity? A conscience? Or just for the last eleven years to never have happened?_

She reaches down and turns his chair so he's facing her. It's a little closer to manhandling him than she's usually willing to go: he's seen her get into it with both Mitchell and Teal'c (and Carter's smart enough to stay out of the way), but she's never attacked him. Sometimes he wonders if there are still things Dani doesn't want to know. (Probably not, probably nothing more than habit; he learned a long time ago not to let himself hope.) He's surprised (won't let her see it) when she climbs into the chair with him, straddling his hips. He puts a hand on her out of reflex, steadying her even though she doesn't need it. Close up, he can feel the fever-heat of her skin. _My candle burns at both ends. It will not last the night; But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends -- It gives a lovely light..._

"Mitchell was a _Tok'ra_ ," she says, leaning close enough to whisper into his ear. "And we'd all have been dead three days after they sealed the rift, and they killed Anubis again and again in all those universes, and … you know what, Jack? He didn't die."

"He's dead here," O'Neill says, and she chuckles softly in response.

"No," she says. "No." She turns her head to kiss the side of his mouth, and he thinks of the tagline to the old joke: _never sleep with anyone crazier than you are._ "They don't know. I didn't tell them. Just you. Because they told me where he is, all of them, and we can kill him now."

Anubis isn't dead? Yeah, now he knows what she was lying about in the debrief. Whatever she found out there, she's sure it's true here too. He thinks about the battle over Antarctica, the Spring Surprise (the destruction of Western Civilization), and how the only thing that's held Earth together and kept the Program up and running these last three years is the fact everyone believes that when Anubis brought his fleet, they killed him.

"Oh, good," he says blandly. "That should spice up my weekly report to the Oval Office." He keeps his voice even. He's not sure if Mitchell can see the difference yet between 'crazy' and 'crazier', and most of the time it doesn't matter.

Most of the time.

He feels her breath spill over his skin as she laughs soundlessly. "Do you think it matters?" she asks.

"Well, he _is_ the President. I hate to bore him." He hasn't got the first clue what she's asking about.

She slides back, getting to her feet, and settles her glasses back into place. "I'll tell you about it. Soon. I'm going home now. Going home." She repeats the phrase as if she's trying to figure out what it means.

"You do that. You know how T worries."

"That's why I didn't tell him," she says patronizingly. Then she smiles brightly. "Maybe he'll talk to us before we kill him."

He thinks of a time (years ago) when he'd thought he'd bought his soul back. Washed it clean in innocence and idealism and good works. _We're peaceful explorers._ He thinks of the conventional wisdom that says torture isn't a useful interrogation tool because you can't trust the intel you get. He thinks of promises (express, implied) he made to Teal'c in a dungeon a very long way from here, and how he couldn't keep them. And he thinks of Dani in an interrogation room with a Lucian asset they _had_ to break. How she'd giggled like a teenager. How Teal'c offered her advice.

If the life he leads is his penance, why is everyone he loves in Hell with him? "Go home," he says, and she smiles at him again (bright and meaningless) as she leaves.

He watches the monitors long enough to be sure she's really gone. There's a bottle in his desk drawer, and once upon a time (in another life) he was a drinking man. He tells himself the day he taps it, sitting here alone in his office getting drunk because he can't face his job, is they day he'll hand in his papers. And he knows, even if that day comes, that he won't. (He thinks about a universe where _Henry Landry_ was in charge of the SGC.) They used to call the Program Earth's first (and last) line of defense. Now he defends Earth from the Program, and the Program from Earth, and he tries to make himself believe the day will come when he doesn't have to do one or the other, and he can't.

Going home (leaving the Mountain, at least) has lost its charm. There are a few things he still needs to do here, anyway. He opens the top drawer of his desk and takes out his personal weapon one more time. Gets to his feet and slides it into its holster. Gives the monitors one last check. Keys his intercom and tells Galloway to take the rest of the day off.

#

There are a few people in the chapel when he arrives. Team leaders. Old guard. It's traditional for whoever the stars were chalked up for to be there when they're erased. Today they aren't (SG-1 gives the chapel a wide berth, even Mitchell). Harper hands him a rag and Dixon hands him a spray bottle of water. A few seconds work and the stars are gone. Again. For now.

"Glad they made it back, sir," Harper says, and he nods. Once upon a time he swore an oath to defend the United States of America, and later that became defending all of Earth, and because of that oath he's glad too.

Harper and Dixon are the last to leave. Having borne witness, they're off to spread the word, and he thinks of Dysmas and Gestas and wonders if his descent into obscure blasphemy would amuse Father Mike.

"It doesn't get any easier, does it, Jack?"

He doesn't turn away from the wall when Mike comes in. "I never thought it would," he answers. "They made it back. That's enough."

"Is it? Hope is a virtue, you know."

Mike's just doing his job. But O'Neill thinks of Dani facing down Senator (at the time) Kinsey. Kinsey'd called the Gate 'Pandora's Box'. Dani told him that Pandora's Box contained Hope as well as all the evils of Mankind.

"Hope is a luxury," he answers.

There's no room for luxury in the world Anubis made them.

O'Neill hears Mike sigh, as if he's said about what he expected and he still doesn't like it much. "Well if I can't cheer you up, go home. You don't have to wait up for the children any longer. They're back."

Mike doesn't tell him he can stop worrying about them. Lying is a sin.

#

When O'Neill gets to the surface and steps outside, the sunlight makes him blink a little. It's a beautiful day.

Anywhere but here.

###


End file.
